In passenger cars or even in tractors, it is known to provide rollover-protection systems to create a survival space for occupants in the event of vehicle rollover, which have a rollover element, for example, a rollover bar, which is assigned to an individual vehicle seat or several vehicle seats, and in the rest position is housed in a cassette attached to the vehicle, from which it can be abruptly moved into an upper support position and locked in this support position on recognition of an accident of the vehicle.
Rollover bars typically consist of a U-shaped bar, whose tubular arms are vertically guided in the vertical tube of a module attached to the vehicle. A coil spring is arranged in the interior of each arm, which is held under tension by a holding device that can be released as a function of an accident signal of the vehicle sensor mechanism, so that the rollover bar is deployed in tenths of a second under the influence of a spring and locked into its support position by an appropriate locking device. The two tubular arms are then connected to each other by a cross-yoke, over which a cushioned impact element is generally pushed.
Examples of a rollover bar that can be deployed or swung out in the event of an accident, extending over the entire width of the vehicle, are described in DE 195 40 819 C2 and DE 197 12 955 A1.
DE 198 38 989 C1 is referred to as an example of a rollover-protection device assigned to only one vehicle seat, with a rollover element that can be deployed independently of a rollover element assigned to another vehicle seat. In it, a rollover-protection device assigned to each vehicle seat is disclosed, consisting of a cassette attached to the vehicle, a rollover element guided and secured and deployable in the cassette in the form of a profile-bar element extending over the entire width of the cassette, a locking device for self-locking of the deployment movement and a spring drive system to deploy the profile-bar element, and a mechanical holding device to hold the rollover element in a rest state against the tension force of a compression spring of a spring-drive system.
All the above-mentioned rollover-protection systems have the common feature that the module of the corresponding rollover protection device attached to the vehicle is configured as a robust cassette or a corresponding tube profile and is arranged in the area of a vehicle's transverse wall, positioned behind the driver's seat.
Depending on the configuration of the module attached to the vehicle, this is disadvantageously associated with a large number of components and high total weight for the rollover-protection system and therefore the entire vehicle.
The rollover-protection systems just described also have the drawback that passage capability between a storage space in the rear and the passenger compartment is often limited, because of the typically wide cassette of the module of the corresponding rollover-protection device attached required to the vehicle to guarantee the required rigidity.
Thus, rollover-protection devices arranged generally in the center of a vehicle seat permit no or only limited passage between an occupant space and a storage space in the rear of the vehicle, since only a limited area is available between the rollover-protection devices of the corresponding seats for a passage opening.
The task of the present invention is to modify a vehicle, especially a convertible vehicle, with a rollover-protection system of the type just mentioned with respect to the most compact possible design with few components that are easy to install, with limited weight, and also with improved passage capability.